


Somebody Else's Thanksgiving

by posingasme



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Big Brother Dean, Fallen Angel Castiel, Gen, M/M, Monster Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 06:19:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8654029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/posingasme/pseuds/posingasme
Summary: In the days of the apocalypse, a horrible hunting accident gives Sam an opportunity to stay out of Lucifer's grasp. Team Free Will must live with the consequences.





	

They had plenty to be thankful for. They had one another. That was most of it. But they were also strong, and smart, and well-trained. That kept them alive, at least most of the time. And when it didn't...well, they had one another. It always came back to that.

Then one year, Thanksgiving came and Sam's dinner was something far more exotic than cranberries and stuffing, and Dean's heart broke.

He couldn't do what he was supposed to do. He just couldn't put the blade through his brother's throat. No matter what had come between them that year, Sam had sacrificed himself for the good of the whole damn human race, and Dean wasn't going to be the hunter who cut him down for it.

“It's the demon blood or-or this. And you're afraid of the demon blood, so…” 

Dean had been wild with horror. “No! Sammy, no! We aren't leaving you this way! There's another way! There's always-”

“Yeah!” Sam barked back. His sense of smell was far beyond anything he could ever have imagined before. He hated it. “There's another way! But it's the last thing you want! Cas, am I right? Tell him!”

Castiel looked as though he had been kicked in the throat. He looked from one brother to the other. “Sam-”

“Cas,” he warned in a dangerous tone. “Tell the truth. Am I right?”

The angel couldn't look at him while he said it. “Dean, forgive me, but he's correct when he says his current state would leave his vessel...undesirable to Lucifer. And unlike his death, Lucifer could not simply snap him back to life.”

“But-but couldn't he just cure him? I mean...you can cure him, can't you? Cas?”

“Yes, Dean, but-” 

“He’ll never find me,” Sam murmured. Their voices were beginning to hurt his ears. “Dean, Lucifer won't be connected to me now. You heard Cas. I'm not his vessel like this.” 

Dean's eyes were filling with angry despair. “You were never his vessel! You're my damn kid brother!”

“Cas?”

The angel cringed. “It isn't ideal-”

“It-Really? It's not ideal? He's a damn vampire, Cas! He's a freaking fang! We hunt these things!” 

And Dean had hunted him, relentlessly. But not to kill him. He had wanted to cure him. He had chased him without rest for most of a year. Then Castiel had been thrown from Heaven’s gates when it was learned that he had meddled in the master plan, and he and Dean had been forced to lay low. So far as Sam could tell, the demons had no hope of breaking the rest of the seals; not in his lifetime anyway...or at least not in Dean's. Sam's lifetime was considerably longer now.

Dean and Castiel hunted here and there. Sam watched them from a safe distance, and smiled to himself as he watched them grow closer. Dean grieved for Sam with his entire soul, but Castiel somehow saved a shard of his heart. Dean was sad, but he wasn't lonely. He was heartbroken, but he was loved. In truth, it was probably the best either of them could have hoped for.

Sam fed as infrequently as he could. He hunted tirelessly, as he refused to take from any but the most monstrous of humans. It went against everything John and Dean had taught him, but Sam's moral compass told him it was the best he could do. He tracked down witches, killers and those who conspired with demons willingly. He tailed Dean anytime he was hunting something that could potentially be human. If he had to feed from a human, one who targeted his brother and his brother's formerly angelic lover was a good choice.

Sometimes he suspected Dean could feel him nearby, and he would fall back a bit. But inevitably, especially on nights like this, he had to be close to his only family. 

Sam was lying still on a thick branch in the tree outside the old house when he heard the screen porch door close. He closed his eyes, and listened to the familiar heartbeat and footstep.

“Sammy?” 

The eyes flew open. 

“I know you're out there. I'm...I'm sorry you won't come near. You've never come near. Not in all these years. But it's been enough just knowing you're out there. I hope you're doing right. And I hope you're doing good. I'm good, Sam. It took a real long time. But I'm good.” He laughed a little then. “Guess if it weren't for Cas, I'd have turned into Rufus by now. Remember him? Wonder whatever happened to him. Guess you know Bobby took one for the team a while back. You were probably there when I burned him.”

He had been. And it had destroyed him to hear Dean weep. In another life, when he and Sam had run together, Dean might have just gotten angry. But without Sam, Dean had simply fallen apart, and Castiel had put him back together as well as he could. It was the day Sam had come closest to approaching him. But he trusted that their angel friend would heal his brother in his perfectly human way, and in time he had.

“Sammy, I miss you, man. I never stopped missing you. I stopped hunting you. And I guess that's when you started stalking me. Some pair we make, huh? You got any idea how long it's been?”

Sam frowned. It hadn't occurred to him to wonder that for a very long time. Dean and Castiel had settled after a hunting injury had forced them to hole up for a while, and they had reluctantly come to the realization that they might need to think about a permanent place. Sam had wandered after that, but had made his way to their home now and then. That had been a few years back? 

As if he could hear Sam's thoughts, Dean answered. He laughed as he sat on the porch stairs. “Cas and me...we came to this farmhouse in the middle of nowhere almost twenty years ago, Sam. It'll be twenty in March, or so says my live-in scribe. Twenty years, and I haven't had a real hunt in about seven.” 

The younger man sat up, stunned but silent. Twenty years? Seven since the last big hunt? How could so much time have flown by? 

“Bet you didn't know that,” he murmured. "Been forty years since we shoulda had an apocalypse. And I never said thank you.”

Tears welled in Sam's eyes. Suddenly, Dean sounded so old. When had that happened? How had he never noticed that Dean's voice was huskier than their father's had ever been, that he was older than even Bobby had grown to be? Sam hadn't aged a minute since the bite, but Dean…

“I know you didn't mean to get yourself turned. But I was so pissed at you for not letting Cas heal it. Pissed at him a really long time too. And later I was pissed at you for making me pissed with him. At my lowest, and my drunkest, I lit into him for not healing you back when he still could. And he would cry and just let me wail on him, and then I'd cry and beg him to forgive me. Then Bobby said to me, Dean, that boy is family just as sure as Sam was. He loves you, so stop being stupid.”

Sam smiled, and tears flooded his face. 

“A poet, that man,” Dean grumbled. “But he was right. Cas is...He's my whole family, outside of a ghost that follows me around and watches over me. He's my world. I wouldn't have that if it weren't for you. I never thanked you.”

He listened as the strong old man pulled himself up and stepped back toward the doorway. 

Then Dean smiled out at the trees around him. “Happy Thanksgiving, little brother. Thank you.”

The tears washed him clean all night long, as he listened to the heartbeats of his family nearby. He watched over them, grateful that he was sad but not lonely, and heartbroken but yet loved.

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by an AO3 reader who wanted both fang!Sam and a bit of Destiel. Hope you enjoyed! 
> 
> Comments keep me writing!!
> 
> ~Posing


End file.
